Racialized science seeks to explain human population differences
in health, intelligence, education, and wealth as
the consequence of immutable, biologically based differences
between "racial" groups. Recent advances in the
sequencing of the human genome and in an understanding
of biological correlates of behavior have fueled racialized
science, despite evidence that racial groups are not genetically
discrete, reliably measured, or scientifically meaningful.
Yet even these counterarguments often fail to take
into account the origin and history of the idea of race. This
article reviews the origins of the concept of race, placing
the contemporary discussion of racial differences in an
anthropological and historical context.r